okay so i made a new dialpad for my phone. i don't really know what size it should be or anything about it. i made it and saved it as a png file. the next problem is where do i put it on the phone? i wish there was a new tutorial for this. found one but very old.

how do i open them up? they are under mobilephone.app. si there a tutorial somewhere out there to start from scratch or replace the image behind the dialer? i found a template on here that i can make the background a pic of my kids but don't know what to do with it when done

I personally don't know of any dialer theme tutorials but doing it this way is imo the best way to understand theming. By just getting a previously made theme and examining it. You will be able to see the image sizes, names, location.

The custom dialer theme will be in /Library/Themes/ <--here along with all your other Winterboard themes.

I didn't understand your question "how do I open them up",
Are you stuck on opening the Mobilephone.app within the Theme?
Are you on a Mac or PC?

Edit: Broomhead just posted a link to "how to" here in the other thread you posted in:

okay i figured out how to open them up and i made a quick one with my kids but i can't get it to show up on the iphone. i put it in Applications/MobilePhone.app and saved it as BarDialer_Sel.png. in winterboard i have all the themes off and no dialers checked. all i get is the stock dialer.